Welcome back! I hope you all took a little time off over the holidays to enjoy family and friends. You deserved it. And though I missed you, dear Readers, I know we both needed a break.
You see, the holidays can totally overwhelm me. Sometimes I find the din unbearable. This time I decided to take action. Around Christmas time, I stopped reading food blogs, deleted a good part of my Inbox, and turned off my phone for a week.
It was bliss. I got a chance to recharge, without being constantly bombarded with exhortations and distractions. But I missed writing and teaching and especially cooking. When a friend asked me to sleuth out her favorite salad at a local Japanese restaurant, I was on the job in an egg-timer minute.
This recipe can … [Read more...]

One of the perks of writing a food blog is the culinary journey I get to take each week. Just in the past few days, I’ve traipsed from France to Turkey to Greece and Japan, crossing over borders without leaving the dinner table. I even get to drag my family along for the ride.
Last night’s dinner combined a trip to Paris (cheese fondue) with a stopover in Kyoto for these sweet and salty glazed Brussels sprouts. Once the baguette and roasted potatoes were gone, the kids and husband had no choice but to venture their skewers to the bowl of little green-brown orbs, dunking them into the rich, ever-so-funky fondue. Much to my surprise, the sprouts disappeared in minutes.
Try them over brown rice or quinoa, as a side dish for … [Read more...]

Thanksgiving has already been on my mind for weeks. The minute November comes around, I begin training for the meal of champions. My daily workout consists of scribbling menus, testing new recipes, and obsessing about what dishes will ultimately find their place on my holiday table.
But the result of this culinary exercise will be delicious indeed. Take this recipe, for example. My challenge was to create a holiday recipe that would riff on traditional Brussels sprouts while elevating them to a fresh new realm. For an added hurdle, the dish had to make my life easier by doing double duty as a vegetable and salad in one.
Simply shredding the little sprouts turned out to be the winning feat. With cook time reduced to a matter of minutes, … [Read more...]

Brussels Sprout ChipsAre you a lover or hater? The mere mention of brussels sprouts seems to always elicit either a fervent grimace or rapturous smile. In my family, I was outnumbered four to one. In fact, for years, I never bothered to buy brussels sprouts because I knew no one could stand the cabbage-y smell, much less the taste.
But you know me well enough by now to sense another imminent cooking challenge. Could I get my husband to embrace the little green buds after a lifetime of rejecting them? Would my children, 3-year-old included, ever learn to appreciate brussels sprouts and even gobble them up enthusiastically?
My only shot at success was to find a way to make them irresistibly salty and crunchy, like chips. With my … [Read more...]

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Seasonal Produce Charts

Try these handy charts we found on the CUESA (Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture) website. Print out copies and keep them taped to the inside of a kitchen cupboard so you can reference them often and enjoy all the fresh produce at your local farmers market!